sábado, 30 de marzo de 2013

Archaeologists have discovered ancient remains after they were "brought back to life" by the snow covering the landscape.
Settlements dating back 4,000 years were only found because just the right amount of snow fell on the countryside.
Experts were flying over the landscape in a light aircraft when they spotted the Bronze Age remains below.
A combination of the snow and the low sun in the sky at this time of year provided ideal conditions to plot the sites for the first time.

Archaeologist Dr Toby Driver said: "The snow provides breathtaking conditions for our aerial reconnaissance.
"Snow evens out the colours of the landscape allowing complex earthwork monuments to be seen more clearly and precisely."
The experts on board the four-seater Cessna identified up to 40 ancient earthworks hidden beneath centuries of growth in Mid and South Wales.
They included a 20-metre wide burial mound on common land at Ogmore-by-Sea near Bridgend and a moated site at Llangorse lake near Brecon.
The team were also able to photograph earth works which they already knew about including the remains of a Norman castle at Painscastle near Builth Wells.
Others they were able to map again were the Castle Bank hill fort near Llandrindod Wells, Crugerydd castle near the A44 in Powys and Coedcae Gaer hill fort near Bridgend.
The new discoveries were recorded by the experts from the Aberystwyth-based Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales.
Dr Driver, a team leadrer with the commission, said: "The right depth of drifting or melting snow helps to show up slight differences in topography which can highlight an archaeological site.
"It's as if the snow has brought them back to life.
"It has also highlighted well-known monuments like Painscastle medieval motte and bailey together with previously unrecorded earthworks."
The Royal Commission has been using aerial reconnaissance to identify ancient sites for the last 25 years.
But the recent Arctic conditions which have seen snow laying on the Welsh hills for weeks have given the team a new way of unlocking the

mysteries which cannot be seen from the ground.
Dr Driver said: "Aerial archaeology remains one of the most powerful tools to uncover and document this lost heritage.
"So far well over 5,000 new archaeological sites have been discovered across Wales in 25 years of flying.
"We can now appreciate that Wales was intensively farmed and settled from the Neolithic era 6,000 years ago."

ISLAMABAD: The only Buddhist monastery in the Taxila valley was a thriving centre of learning at the end of the third century AD.

The monastery attracted so many students and monks from around greater India that its administration built an annex to house the seekers of enlightenment coming to meditate there, archaeologists at Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) have discovered.
Another notable finding was that the main compound of the monastery, located in present-day Badal Pur, is at least 300 years older than archaeologists previously estimated. The main compound, which consists of 55 “monk cells”, was excavated between 2005 and 2012.
An excavation mission that began digging at the southern end of the main monastery in March unearthed a new mini-monastery, Dr Muhammad Ashraf Khan, director of the Taxila Institute of Asian Civilisations (TIAC), told The Express Tribune.
Dr Khan, who is heading the ongoing excavation mission, said eight monk cells have been excavated so far at the new monastery, which has a 40 by 40 metre square plan and four metre high walls.
“We were unaware of the existence of this monastery up till now,” Khan said. “When we cleared bushes from the area south of the main monastery, there were visible signs that a structure could be buried underneath.”
The signs were pointing in the right direction, as the archaeologists and students found a structure constructed of stucco — a coating made by mixing limestone, sand and water — and mud plaster in diaper pattern masonry.
This form of masonry pattern, which consists of thin layers of metamorphic rocks interspersed with stone blocks, is associated with Kushan architecture, Khan said.
The Kushans were a tribe that migrated to Gandhara around the first century AD from Central Asia and Afghanistan.
The tribe selected Peshawar as its seat of power and later expanded east into the heartland of India to establish the Kushan empire, which lasted until the third century AD.
TIAC archaeologists believe the new monastery flourished during the late Kushan period, when the Kushans had numerous cultural and trade exchanges with the Buddhists.
Khan said that based on artefacts such as a gold coin with the seal of a second century Kushan emperor found at the larger Badal Pur monastery, the site was believed to be from the same century.
But new evidence suggests otherwise.
Khan said pieces of charcoal found at the monastery were analysed in the US at the University of Wisonsin using carbon dating — a reliable scientific method for determining the age of certain materials.
The university’s report states the monastery was built somewhere around t

he third century BC, making it one of the oldest monasteries in the Gandhara region.
During the excavation of the new, smaller monastery, the team also found a stucco statue of Buddha in meditation, iron objects such as door knocks, pottery, animal bones, coins and a grinding stone. A ‘jar’, which could be the top of a buried stupa, is being excavated at present.
The bones indicate the monastery’s dwellers also domesticated animals.
The bones and coins have been sent for analysis to the Pakistan Museum of Natural History and Punjab Department of Archaeology respectively, Khan said.
A total of 200 students, of masters-level and higher are taking turns participating in the excavation.
“The best part is that our young students get training and practical experience in the principles of archaeology,” Khan said.
He said that due to limited funding from QAU, the TIAC can only commit to short excavation missions. More often than not, sites have to be left unguarded after a brief excavation due to paucity of funds.
Khan said he is trying to get the Buddhist community living in Pakistan to sponsor the excavations and the preservation of important artefacts.Published in The Express Tribune, March 28th, 2013.

Two shipwrecks believed to be 17th-century Danish warships have emerged along the Stockholm waterfront due to unusually low water levels.I was stunned by how big it was," marine archaeologist Jim Hansson told The Local of the find.

Hansson was out for a stroll along Kastellholmen island with his girlfriend on Sunday, taking in some rare springtime sun, when he noticed a pattern of wooden stumps penetrating the surface.

"If it had only been one or two beams sticking up, I may not have noticed it," he said.

"But I saw immediately that it was a shipwreck. You could clearly see the bow and the stern."

Upon further examination of the area, Hansson caught a glimpse of another, never-before-seen wreck.

"I'd heard rumours that it might exist, but I'd never seen any trace of it," he wrote on his blog.

Hansson, who works for the Maritime Museum (Sjöhistoriska museet) in Stockholm, explained that archaeologists have known about the existence of one of the wrecks for decades.

Previous examinations revealed that it had been used as the foundation for a bridge, but it had more or less been forgotten since it was found in the 1940s.

However, now that lower-than-usual water levels in Stockholm harbour have made almost the entire wreck visible, archaeologists are taking a closer look

"No one realized just how large the shipwreck was. It's 30 metres long, so the actual size of ship was probably about as big as the Vasa," he said, referencing the famed 17th-century Swedish warship that was recovered from Stockholm harbour and is now on display at a nearby museum.

"There are lots of wrecks around Stockholm but you rarely find anything this big. It's incredible."

After consulting with his colleagues as well as archives at the Maritime Museum, Hansson now believes the wreck is that of the Grå Ulven ('Gray Wolf'), a Danish-built man-of-war that reportedly sunk in Stockholm harbour in 1670.

According to Hansson, the ship has a "fascinating history", having been captured from the Danish navy by the Swedes in 1659 following a skirmish near Ebeltoft Cove in Denmark.

The second wreck may also be a Danish ship known as the Den Stora Draken ('The Big Dragon') and museum officials have since been in contact with their colleagues in Denmark to confirm their theory.

"We know that the wrecks were sunk in the area," Andreas Olsson, head of the Maritime Museum's archaeology section told the Expressen newspaper.

Hansson and his team have spent Thursday taking wood samples from the wreck to be sent for testing to confirm that the wrecks are indeed those of the Grå Ulven and Den Stora Draken.

He expects to have an answer within six to eight weeks.http://www.thelocal.se/47000/20130328/#.UVXQ3GeyLyB

miércoles, 27 de marzo de 2013

Three impressive funerary monuments which might open a new chapter to the study of the evolution of the so-called Macedonian Tombs have been discovered.
The tombs, found by Dr. Angeliki Kottaridi (Director, 17th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities), have been located in the area surrounding the Vergina Town Hall, where a cluster of very important tombs, connected with the Temenidae rulers of Macedonia, had been brought to light 15 years ago.
Of the three tombs, the middle one is described by Dr. Kottaridi as “large, stone-built cist grave, surviving almost completely up to its original height, modestly decorated with blue and red pained bands and with the characteristic stone pedestal that points the position of the funerary bed and the funerary urn placed on its South side”. Another tomb, located south, is described above, was found “very destroyed”.
North of both tombs described above, a very impressive monument came to light. “The tomb, surviving up to the middle of its original height (estimated to reach 4,50 m.), is formed as a wide hypostyle hall measuring 7 X 5 m. Two non-fluted Ionian columns with considerably high square bases, were placed along the building’s axis supporting the stone ceiling while semicolumns –two on each long and two on each narrow wall – were adding grace and elegance. In each of the corners, quarter-columns were placed instead of pilasters […]. A column capital was found next to the western semi-column. Covered with white plaster, the lines of its scrolls painted with blue and its scrolls’ centre painted in red, it repeats a type known from mid 5th century BC monuments. The gate opening, framed by two semi-columns, is located in the middle of the Northern broad side and it could be reached through a monumental stairway. The pedestal connected with the funerary bed and the urn is located straight opposite the gate”, says Dr. Kottaridi adding that “this building, with its unprecedented plan, promises to open a new page to the discussion on the origins of the Macedonian Tombs”.
Still, beyond its architectural plan, the human and animal remains found in this tomb are worth examining. Dr. Kottaridi counts “fifteen horses, several dogs, a dozen of adults, several infants and toddlers” which must had been thrown dead inside the empty and destroyed grave, well after its original use, alongside shards of pottery, tiles, pieces of a marble funerary stele and a magic scroll (katadesmos). The single layer they cover, the position of the bones that shows they supported bodies when they were placed there and the shards that can be restored, point that they were thrown in the tomb at once, during a single tragic incident. This, according to the pottery and a bronze coin, is probably connected to the destruction of Aigai which followed Perseus’ defeat by the Romans in Pydna (168 BC) and the fall of the Macedonian Kingdom.
At any case, all these tombs were found violently looted. This fact might be connected to the destruction of the royal necropolis of Aigai in 276 BC by Pyrrhus the Great Gaul mercenaries –an incident reported by Diodorus. However, traces from the funerary pyres were found during the excavation. A relief in gold, probably part of a shield’s decoration, depicting fighting warriors was found in the cist grave. A golden oak, found also in the cist grave, witnesses that a golden wreath was present in the tomb, meaning that the deceased was a man. The same result comes from finding pieces of a cuirass in the form of scales in the hypostyle tomb, while a number of golden discs carved with the characteristic Macedonian star also survived the looting.

Between the hypostyle and the cist grave, the archaeologists -digging a tiny bit deeper from the ground- found a 15 m. – long floor paved with pebbles as well as pieces of white and colored wall plaster. There are no traces from the original building, due to the removing of its building material for secondary use. However, fragments from alabaster unguentariums and a bronze tinned plate found on the ground probably demonstrate possible funerary cult performance, while a coin of Perdikkas II (454-413 BC), helps to the dating. Fragments of a very big sculpted floral motif with spiral shoots, buds and acanthus leaves recalling the central antefix of the Parthenon came probably from an overground funerary monument, while the stratigraphy indicates that there have been three or four more tombs in the cluster’s area.
“The dig’s completion as well as research and conservation of the finds will help in defining the general image of the area. It is not impossible that new elements will come to light to help us connect these monuments with those people who, from the time of Amyntas I ((530-498 BC) and Alexander I (498-454 BC) up to Philip II(359-336 BC), defined the fate of the Macedonian Kingdom”, says Dr. Kottaridi.
* Dr. Kottaridi presented her work yesterday 20/03/2013 during the proceedings of the annual Conference for the Archaeological Work in Macedonia and Thrace.
http://www.archaiologia.gr/en/blog/2013/03/21/new-finds-at-aigai/

martes, 26 de marzo de 2013

Carvings on the walls of the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna depict a world of plenty. Oxen are fattened in a cattle yard. Storehouses bulge with grain and fish. Musicians serenade the pharaoh as he feasts on meat at a banquet.
But new research hints that life in Amarna was a combination of grinding toil and want—at least for the ordinary people who would have hauled the city's water, unloaded the boats on the Nile, and built Amarna's grand stone temples, which were erected in a rush on the orders of a ruler named Akhenaten, sometimes called the "Heretic Pharaoh."
Researchers examining skeletons in the commoners' cemetery in Amarna have discovered that many of the city's children were malnourished and stunted. Adults show signs of backbreaking work, including high levels of injuries associated with accidents.
"We have evidence of the most stressed and disease-ridden of the ancient skeletons of Egypt that have been reported to date," said University of Arkansas bioarchaeologist Jerome Rose (a National Geographic Committe for Research and Exploration grantee), one of the team of experts examining the dead. "Amarna is the capital city of the Egyptian empire. There should be plenty of food . . . Something seems to be amiss."
Amarna was the capital city conjured out of the desert sands in roughly 1350 B.C. by Akhenaten, husband to the famous Queen Nefertiti and likely father of King Tut. Akhenaten rejected the crowded cast of Egyptian gods in favor of the worship of just one, the Aten, or sun god. At Akhenaten's command, the city of Amarna was built some 200 miles (322 kilometers) south of modern Cairo as a place where Aten could reign supreme.
Of the 20,000 to 30,000 people who lived at Amarna during its brief heyday—about 15 years—perhaps ten percent were the wealthy elite, who lived in spacious villas and had lavishly decorated tombs built for them. The rest ended their days in what is known today as the South Tombs cemetery, where most were buried in tightly packed graves marked by piles of rocks.Secrets From the Graves
In the current issue of the journalAntiquity, the Amarna Project team reports excavating more than 200 graves at the South Tombs site and finding only 20 coffins. Most of the skeletons are instead rolled in stick mats—a likely sign of modest means in a society that deemed coffins highly desirable. One of the cemetery's few coffins is painted with hieroglyphics that can't actually be read, suggesting that the coffin artist, and perhaps the person who commissioned the coffin, were illiterate.
Nor do the tombs contain many of the grave goods found in wealthier burials. The ordinary people of Amarna couldn't have afforded much, but the bareness of their burials may also indicate that grave goods were becoming less important at the time, said archaeologist Anna Stevens, assistant director of the work at the site. Among the few objects found in the graves are three hippopotamus-shaped beads, probably worn by a woman or child before death as protective amulets.
The children of Amarna apparently needed all the protection they could get. Skeletons from those between the ages of 3 and 25 at the time of death show signs of scurvy and rickets, according to research that Kathleen Kuckens, a University of Arkansas student working with Rose, will present at an anthropology meeting in April.
Kuckens will also report that the children's teeth are grooved, a telltale mark of malnutrition. Children older than about 8.5 years showed signs of serious stunting, according to preliminary data that University of Arkansas graduate student Ashley Shidner will also present at the April meeting. It seems likely that those children weren't properly nourished and were engaged in abnormally high levels of physical activity. The children's skeletons show evidence of the constant use of muscles, Shidner said.
Amarna's adults had it no easier than the children. More than 75 percent of the skeletons studied in detail had arthritis in their limbs or spines, suggesting hard labor. Fractured and compressed vertebrae were common, and 67 percent of the skeletons showed signs of at least one healing or healed fracture. Those rates are "really high" and "indicate a high workload," said osteoarchaeologist Jessica Kaiser of Ancient Egypt Research Associates, a group that is excavating around the pyramids of Giza.Heavy Workload (Literally)
It may be no coincidence that Amarna was built using a recent innovation: a standardized stone building block now known as a talatat, which weighed nearly 155 pounds (70 kilograms) and was judged to be light enough for one worker to carry. A carved scene that probably originated at Amarna shows a man balancing a talatat block across his shoulders, bracing it with both hands. Perhaps, the researchers speculate, hefting stones like that

contributed to the high degree of arthritis among Amarna's workers.
Not all experts think the workload of Amarna's workers was exceptional, though. Skeletons at the ancient Egyptian cemetery called Saqqara also show frequent signs of trauma and physical activity, said Andrew Chamberlain, a University of Manchester bioarchaeologist who has studied the Saqqara remains. Rose responded that although he hasn't seen data for every ancient Egyptian population, many populations show lower levels of workload-related stress than the Amarna common folk do.After Akhenaten died in about 1336 B.C., Amarna was quickly abandoned. But the South Tombs cemetery has remained to provide a reality check on the propaganda of the pharaoh who hoped to build a place that would be a "House of Rejoicing" for the sun god.
"Amarna was supposed to be this great city where everyone would prosper," said Shidner. "But it wasn't quite the happy place that Akhenaten was making it out to be."

domingo, 24 de marzo de 2013

In September 2012, researchers at the University of Georgia (UGA) began the The Orpheus Relief Project to determine how a 2000 year old marble relief was originally coloured based on the surviving pigments adhering to the marble, but the final results came as a shock to everyone.
The panel relief consists of the youthful figure of Hermes, the Greek messenger god, which survives from a larger, three-figured composition depicting the god escorting Eurydice to the Underworld during her final parting from Orpheus. This larger composition, known as the Orpheus Relief, is one of the most celebrated examples of Greek sculpture from the High Classical period, ca. 450–400 B.C. that had been copied by the Romans ca. 50 BC-AD 50.

Part of an important collection

The piece formed part of an important collection of Greek and Roman art donated to the University of Mississippi by the estate of famed art historian David Moore Robinson in 1960. UGA was loaned the piece for research as in antiquity, Greek and Roman marble sculpture was not pristine white but colourfully painted and this example had traces of pigment still adhering to the marble.
The relief was the only one of six surviving Roman replicas of the Orpheus Relief known to preserve remains of ancient colouration. This included a red pigment on Hermes’ garments. The art department and the chemistry department from UGA conducted microscopic tests to determine how the piece was coloured two thousand years ago.

What they found however, was that instead of being a 2000 year old copy, the Orpheus Relief is likely a far more recent historical reproduction.
Project director Mark Abbe says that using microscopy and chemical analysis, they found that the piece was likely created between the 1880’s and the 1920’s. He believes it was a historical reproduction created to decorate a private home in Rome and is a precise replica of a great classical sculpture.

Sold as the real thing

Abbe believes someone probably sold it to Robinson as the real thing. Robinson published an article in 1948 dating the Orpheus Relief to the Roman period, c. 50 BC-AD 50.

The piece had never been scientifically analysed in a laboratory setting until the UGA project. Abbe says that there was an exhibition in Germany in the 1880’s which focused on how ancient marble sculptures were actually vibrantly painted. That generated a lot of interest in the period. He now believes this piece was created after that exhibition, not to fool anyone, but to celebrate the original colours in Greek classical art.
The complete results of the recent study will be presented by Abbe and scientists from UGA in an interdisciplinary presentation “The Orpheus Relief: Object, Three Perspectives” at the Georgia Museum of Art on 28th March 2013.
http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/03/2013/orpheus-relief-project-results-in-surprise-for-researchers

Mar. 21, 2013 — In the middle of the Bronze Age, around 1000 BC, the amount of metal objects increased dramatically in the Baltic Sea region. Around the same time, a new type of stone monument, arranged in the form of ships, started to appear along the coasts. New research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden shows that the stone ships were built by maritime groups.

The maritime groups were part of a network that extended across large parts of northern Europe. The network was maintained largely because of the strong dependence on bronze.
Archaeologists have long assumed that bronze was imported to Scandinavia from the south, and recent analyses have been able to confirm this notion. The distribution of bronze objects has been discussed frequently, with most analyses focusing on the links in the networks. The people behind the networks, however, are only rarely addressed, not to mention their meeting places.
‘One reason why the meeting places of the Bronze Age are not discussed very often is that we haven’t been able to find them. This is in strong contrast to the trading places of the Viking Age, which have been easy to locate as they left behind such rich archaeological material,’ says the author of the thesis Joakim Wehlin from the University of Gothenburg and Gotland University.
In his thesis, Wehlin has analysed the archaeological material from the Bronze Age stone ships and their placement in the landscape. The stone ships can be found across the entire Baltic Sea region and especially on the larger islands, with a significant cluster on the Swedish island of Gotland. The ships have long been thought to have served as graves for one or several individuals, and have for this reason often been viewed as death ships intended to take the deceased to the afterlife.
‘My study shows a different picture. It seems like the whole body was typically not buried in the ship, and some stone ships don’t even have graves in them. Instead, they sometimes show remains of other types of activities. So with the absence of the dead, the traces of the survivors tend to appear.’

One of Wehlin’s conclusions is that the stone ships and the activities that took place there point to people who were strongly focused on maritime practice. Details in the ships indicate that they were built to represent real ships. Wehlin says that the stone ships give clues about the ship-building techniques of the time and therefore about the ships that sailed on the Baltic Sea during the Bronze Age.
By studying the landscape, Wehlin has managed to locate a number of meeting places, or early ports.
‘These consist of areas that resemble hill forts and are located near easily accessible points in the landscape – that is, near well-known waterways leading inland. While these areas have previously been thought to be much younger, recent age determinations have dated them to the Bronze Age.’
The thesis offers a very extensive account of the stone ships. It also suggests that the importance of the Baltic Sea during the Scandinavian Bronze Age, not least as a waterway, has been underestimated in previous research.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130321082359.htm

Stone ship in Askeberga, Västergötland, Sweden. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Gothenburg)

Ötzi the Iceman, a well-preserved natural mummy of a Chalcolithic (Copper Age), who was found in 1991 in the Schnalstal glacier in the Ötztal Alps. Credit: South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology (Phys.org) —A study on human mitochondrial DNA has led to a new estimate of the time at which humans first began to migrate out of Africa, which was much later than previously thought.

The new study by an International group of evolutionary geneticists used mitochondrial DNA from the remains of ancient modern humans to estimate the rate of genetic mutations. Three of the skeletons were from the Czech Republic and dated at 31,000 years old, two were 14,000 years old, from Oberkassel, Germany. Another sample used was the natural mummy Ötzi the Iceman, who lived some time between 3350 and 3100 BC. The most recent skeleton was that of a man who lived in medieval France 700 years ago, while the oldest was dated at 40,000 years ago, and came from Tianyuan in China. The results suggest that the genetic divergence between African and non-African humans began between 62 and 95 thousand years ago, which tallies with other studies estimating the time through dating of stone tools and fossils, but they disagree with the results of recent genetic studies that estimated the migration began much earlier, up to 130 thousand years ago or even before. The previous studies sequenced the entire genome of living humans to count the number of genetic mutations (around 50) in newborn babies compared to the parents to determine the generational mutation rate. This then provided the a molecular "clock," which could be extrapolated backwards to date important events in human evolution. Triple burial from Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic. Credit: J. SvobodaThe new study sequenced mitochondrial DNA from fossils of ancient modern humans rather than living humans. The fossils were dated using radiocarbon dating methods. Since the samples were from humans who lived up to 40,000 years ago, mutations that have occurred in the genome since they died would be missing, and the samples provided a range of calibration points for their estimation of the start of the migration. google_protectAndRun("render_ads.js::google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);Ads by GoogleArchaeology Field School - 2013 Dig & Student Training Courses Academic Credit NUI Galway Ireland - www.achill-fieldschool.com The disagreement in dating the migration between the new study and previous genetic research could be due to underestimating the number of new mutations in a generation of living humans because of the difficulty of discriminating between true mutations and mistaken ones and because of a desire to avoid false positives. Under-counting would lead to an older estimate for the migration from Africa and other important events. The new date, which agrees with the archaeological evidence, shows that modern humans were in Europe and Asia before and after the most recent glaciation, and they were therefore able to survive and adapt to a dramatically changing climate. The paper was published in the journal Current Biology on 21st March. More information: A Revised Timescale for Human Evolution Based on Ancient Mitochondrial Genomes, Current Biology, 21 March 2013, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.02.044 www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982213002157

With over 25,000 Iron Age graveyards and burial mounds, 1,140 megalithic structures of all sizes, and about 2,500 large rune stones, Sweden is an archaeologist’s paradise.

While recognized predominantly for its colorful Viking past and picturesque medieval towns, Sweden has a history that extends far beyond the the Middle Ages. In this exclusive interview, James Blake Wiener of the Ancient History Encyclopedia speaks to Dr. Martin Rundkvist, a Swedish archaeologist, about his most recent work in attempting to locate a Geatish mead-hall in the archaeologically rich province of Östergötland. With humor and insight, Rundkvist shares his thoughts and enthusiasm.JW: Dr. Martin Rundkvist, it is my immense pleasure to welcome you to the Ancient History Encyclopedia! Your work related to ancient Geatish elite structures in Östergötland is most intriguing and I am thrilled to present your expertise with our international audience.I wanted to begin with a simple question as to why you chose to focus on the Geats (Götar) and their archaeological remains in recent years? Is it because far less research and inquiries have been made on the Geats when compared to the ancient Swedes (Svear) or the Gotlanders (Gutes)?MR: Thanks for inviting me to speak with you. I studied the province of Östergötland mainly because little had been done about 1st millennium CE elite culture there. This in turn was probably because there is no archaeology department at the University of Linköping.

WHEN the Saturn V moon rockets blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, their flight paths took them east, over the Atlantic ocean. The Saturns were made up of three stages. When the first had used up all its fuel, two and a half minutes into the flight, it was unceremoniously jettisoned and left to splash into the sea, safely away from any human habitation.
The rocket stages, and the engines that were attached to them, have sat in their watery junkyard for almost half a century. Now, though, they are beginning to return. On March 20th, in a blog post, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and a confirmed space cadet, announced that his project to bring some of the Saturn’s mighty F1 engines back to the surface had been successful.
It is an impressive feat of engineering, reminiscent of the effort that located the wreck of the RMS Titanic in 1985. NASA’s flight data gave Mr Bezos’s team a rough location to begin the search. They then used sonar to pinpoint the engines’ precise locations. Undersea robots, similar to those used to investigate the Titanic, were sent down through more than 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) of water to confirm the find.
There are a few caveats. It seems Mr Bezos has not managed to recover any complete engines, though he reckons he has enough pieces to cobble together two complete examples. The original goal had been to recover the engines from the most famous flight of all—Apollo 11, whose crew became the first humans to walk on another celestial body. But time, salt water and the effects of smashing into the sea at high speed have left the engines battered and bruised, and the serial numbers on their components (which would enable NASA to identify the specific rocket from which they came) cannot always be read.When the future becomes the past

Nonetheless, it is the most impressive feat of the new—and poignant, or ironic—field of space archaeology. Space travel has been synonymous with the idea of the future for over a hundred years. The Saturns themselves were in many ways out of their time. At 111 metres tall, they were the size of a small office building, and even half a century later they remain the most powerful rockets ever to have flown. Yet these days, the future that the Saturns represented has become an object of study for those who investigate the past, as the heroic space age dreamed of by science-fiction authors since Jules Verne has resolutely failed to materialise. Ever since the cancellation of the Apollo programme in 1970, astronauts have been stuck in low Earth orbit.
There are plenty of others besides Mr Bezos who are keen to investigate and preserve that vanished future. In 2011, for instance, NASA released high-resolution pictures from its Lunar Reconnissance Orbiter spacecraft, showing the various Apollo landing sites, as well as some of the robotic craft sent to the moon in the 1970s by the Soviet Union. A team of amateur astronomers is attempting to locate the ascent stage of Snoopy, Apollo 10's lunar module, which (intentionally) did not actually land and which was abandoned into a sun-circling orbit. And, spurred by the lunar ambitions of China, as well as by the prospect of visits by privately financed robotic spacecraft under Google’s Lunar X Prize, NASA last year released a document requesting that any new visitors to the moon keep their distance from the Apollo landing sites, in order to "protect lunar historic artifacts".
As for Mr Bezos’s engines, they remain the property of NASA. Raising them from the ocean floor was a passion project. If they can be reassembled, he intends to put them on public display. One will presumably end up at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, with the other perhaps going to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, near where Mr Bezos lives. There they will join the dusty spacesuits, scorched crew capsules and model rockets that mark a future that never quite came to be.

Study concludes that damaged monument resulted from earthquake, not rock fall.The Romans built their monuments solidly enough to last for millennia, but not without the wear and tear that time, elements and events can produce to turn pristine structures into romantic ruins. Such is the case for a Roman mausoleum that was built below a sheer cliff, commanding a well-designed view of the forum and castle that spread below it in the ancient city of Pinara in Turkey.
In this case, according to researchers at the University of Cologne, much of its damage was caused by an earthquake. It had been knocked off-kilter, its massive building blocks shifted and part of its pediment collapsed. At first, archaeologists and seismologists were not certain how the mausoleum sustained its damage. An earthquake seemed likely, but the mausoleum is also built under a cliff honeycombed with numerous other tombs, and damage from a rockfall seemed possible. To make the determination, research leader Klaus-G. Hinzen and colleagues mapped the position of each part of the mausoleum using laser scans, and transferred 90 million data points collected from the scans into a 3-D computer model of the tomb. They then ran several damage simulations on the 3-D model, concluding that rockfall was not a likely cause of damage, but that an earthquake with magnitude 6.3 would be sufficient to produce the observed damage pattern to the mausoleum's heavy stone blocks.
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/march-2013/article/ancient-roman-mausoleum-no-match-for-earthquake

In the middle of the Bronze Age, around 1000 BC, the amount of metal objects increased dramatically in the Baltic Sea region. Around the same time, a new type of stone monument, arranged in the form of ships, started to appear along the coasts. New research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden shows that the stone ships were built by maritime groups.
The maritime groups were part of a network that extended across large parts of northern Europe. The network was maintained largely because of the strong dependence on bronze.
Archaeologists have long assumed that bronze was imported to Scandinavia from the south, and recent analyses have been able to confirm this notion. The distribution of bronze objects has been discussed frequently, with most analyses focusing on the links in the networks. The people behind the networks, however, are only rarely addressed, not to mention their meeting places.
‘One reason why the meeting places of the Bronze Age are not discussed very often is that we haven’t been able to find them. This is in strong contrast to the trading places of the Viking Age, which have been easy to locate as they left behind such rich archaeological material,’ says the author of the thesis Joakim Wehlin from the University of Gothenburg and Gotland University.
In his thesis, Wehlin has analysed the archaeological material from the Bronze Age stone ships and their placement in the landscape. The stone ships can be found across the entire Baltic Sea region and especially on the larger islands, with a significant cluster on the Swedish island of Gotland. The ships have long been thought to have served as graves for one or several individuals, and have for this reason often been viewed as death ships intended to take the deceased to the afterlife.
‘My study shows a different picture. It seems like the whole body was typically not buried in the ship, and some stone ships don’t even have graves in them. Instead, they sometimes show remains of other types of activities. So with the absence of the dead, the traces of the survivors tend to appear.’
One of Wehlin’s conclusions is that the stone ships and the activities that took place there point to people who were strongly focused on maritime practice. Details in the ships indicate that they were built to represent real ships. Wehlin says that the stone ships give clues about the ship-building techniques of the time and therefore about the ships that sailed on the Baltic Sea during the Bronze Age.
By studying the landscape, Wehlin has managed to locate a number of meeting places, or early ports.
‘These consist of areas that resemble hill forts and are located near easily accessible points in the landscape – that is, near well-known waterways leading inland. While these areas have previously been thought to be much younger, recent age determinations have dated them to the Bronze Age.’
The thesis offers a very extensive account of the stone ships. It also suggests that the importance of the Baltic Sea during the Scandinavian Bronze Age, not least as a waterway, has been underestimated in previous research.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/Organisations/ViewItem.aspx?OrganisationId=2250&ItemId=129604&CultureCode=en

Al-Hamam Antiquities Inspectorate has succeeded to remove encroachment on Al-Bordan archaeological site, located on Alexandria-Marsa Matrouh highway, in collaboration with Egypt’s tourism and antiquities police.

The site includes remains of Graeco-Roman fortresses, roads, temples and cemeteries.The encroachment on the Al-Bordan archaeological site, located on kilometre 67 on Alexandria-Marsa Matrouh highway, started Friday when a large truck invaded the site with a construction bulldozer, which on its turn damaged a cluster of authentic structures that date back to the Graeco-Roman era, according to director of Marina Al-Alamein Antiquities Khaled Abul-Magd.Abul-Magd accused Yasser Khalil, owner of a contractor company, and truck driver Mohamed Abdel Sattar of violating and damaging the archaeological site. The tourism and antiquities police arrested both accused, but they denied all charges. Both are in custody until the completion of investigations.On Saturday, all encroachment has been removed, but the site is almost completely damaged.Egypt has reportedly suffered from illegal urban and agricultural encroachment on archaeological sites. Earlier in March, residents of neighbouring Al-Hagg Qandil village began cultivating the area around a collection of 18th-dynasty noblemen’s tombs at the ancient site of Tel Al-Amarna in the Upper Egyptian city of Minya, which was Egypt's capital during the reign of monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaton.Minya’s archaeological inspectorate sent a report to both local police and the antiquities ministry.The ministry ordered a halt to the encroachment and stepped up security in the area, while tourism and antiquities police were deployed nearby.Dahshur, 30 km north of Giza plateau, was subjected to violation in January 2013. Residents of the neighbouring Dahshur village proceeded to construct a collection of modern cemeteries before the Black Pyramid of King Amenhotep II.However, Dahshur residents halted construction of the structures after the antiquities ministry offered to provide them with land far from the archaeological site on which to build a cemetery.

By: Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer Published: 03/22/2013 12:51 PM EDT on LiveScience
Contrary to reports by famous Greek historian Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians probably didn't remove mummy guts using cedar oil enemas, new research on the reality of mummification suggests.
The ancient embalmers also didn't always leave the mummy's heart in place, the researchers added.
The findings, published in the February issue of HOMO – Journal of Comparative Human Biology, come from analyzing 150 mummies from the ancient world.Mummy history
In the fifth century B.C., Herodotus, the "father of history," got an inside peek at the Egyptian mummification process. Embalming was a competitive business, and the tricks of the trade were closely guarded secrets, said study co-author Andrew Wade, an anthropologist at the University of Western Ontario.
Herodotus described multiple levels of embalming: The elites, he said, got a slit through the belly, through which organs were removed. For the lower class, mummies had organs eaten away with an enema of cedar oil, which was thought to be similar to turpentine, Herodotus reported. [See Images of Egyptian Mummification Process]

In addition, Herodotus claimed the brain was removed during embalming and other accounts suggested
the heart was always left in place.
"A lot of his accounts sound more like tourist stories, so we're reticent to take everything he said at face value," Wade told LiveScience.Mummy tales
To see how eviscerations really took place, Wade and his colleague Andrew Nelson looked through the literature, finding details on how 150 mummies were embalmed over thousands of years in ancient Egypt. They also conducted CT scans and 3D reconstructions on seven mummies.

sábado, 23 de marzo de 2013

An archaeological dig in Cambridge
has revealed the site's history from the Bronze Age to its role in World War
II.

Excavation of the site in the north-west of the city began in October, ahead
of a large-scale University of Cambridge development.
Roman roads and World War II practice trenches were amongst the
discoveries.
Christopher Evans of Cambridge Archaeological Unit said: "Something that is
going to be vibrant in the future was also vibrant in the past."

Archaeologists believe the site was first colonised for settlement in the
Bronze Age and subsequently saw an Iron Age settlement.'Surprise find'

Mr Evans said the dig was the one of the largest
excavations to have taken place in Cambridgeshire and had unearthed a "thriving"
Roman settlement, from around 60-350AD.

"The site is 1,200m long, it's covering 14 hectares," Mr Evans said.
"We're investigating this great gravel ridge and finding dense Roman
settlement almost continuously along the length of it."
Four Roman cemeteries and 25 human skeletons, some with their skulls missing,
have been discovered along with thousands of other remains.
Archaeologists said it was a surprise to find the zigzag ditches thought to
be part of Cambridge's defence preparations for the war.
Mr Evans said: "It all testifies that things change and that archaeology
often erodes long-held landscape stereotypes.
"It's part of what makes fieldwork so exciting."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-21893150